[Association between cognitive impairment and main metals among oldest old aged 80 years and over in China].

Objective: To identify the main metals involved in cognitive impairment in the Chinese oldest old, and explore the association between these metal exposures and cognitive impairment. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 1 568 participants aged 80 years and older from Healthy Aging and Biomarkers Cohort Study (2017 to 2018). Fasting venous blood was collected to measure the levels of nine metals (selenium, lead, cadmium, arsenic, antimony, chromium, manganese, mercury, and nickel). The cognitive function of these participants was evaluated by using the Chinese version of the Mini-Mental State Examination (CMMSE). The random forest (RF) was applied to independently identify the main metals that affected cognitive impairment. The multivariate logistic regression model and restricted cubic splines (RCS) model were used to further verify the association of the main metals with cognitive impairment. Results: The age of 1 568 study subjects was (91.8±7.6) years old, including 912 females (58.2%) and 465 individuals (29.7%) with cognitive function impairment. Based on the RF model (the out-of-bag error rate was 22.9%), the importance ranking of variables was conducted and the feature screening of five times ten-fold cross-validation was carried out. It was found that selenium was the metal that affected cognitive function impairment, and the other eight metals were not included in the model. After adjusting for covariates, the multivariate logistic regression model showed that with every increase of 10 µg/L of blood selenium levels, the risk of cognitive impairment decreased (OR=0.921, 95%CI: 0.889-0.954). Compared with the lowest quartile(Q1) of blood selenium, the ORs (95%CI) of Q3 and Q4 blood selenium were 0.452 (0.304-0.669) and 0.419 (0.281-0.622) respectively. The RCS showed a linear dose-response relationship between blood selenium and cognitive impairment (Pnonlinear>0.05). Conclusion: Blood selenium is negatively associated with cognitive impairment in the Chinese oldest old.

Effect of micro-arc oxidation surface modification on the properties of the NiTi shape memory alloy.

In this paper, the effects of micro-arc oxidation (MAO) surface modification (alumina coatings) on the phase transformation behavior, shape memory characteristics, in vitro haemocopatibility and cytocompatibility of the biomedical NiTi alloy were investigated respectively by differential scanning calorimetry, bending test, hemolysis ratio test, dynamic blood clotting test, platelet adhesion test and cytotoxicity testing by human osteoblasts (Hobs). The results showed that there were no obvious changes of the phase transformation temperatures and shape memory characteristics of the NiTi alloy after the MAO surface modification and the coating could withstand the thermal shock and volume change caused by martensite-austenite phase transformation. Compared to the uncoated NiTi alloys, the MAO surface modification could effectively improve the haemocopatibility of the coated NiTi alloys by the reduced hemolysis ratio, the prolonged dynamic clotting time and the decreased number of platelet adhesion; and the rough and porous alumina coatings could obviously promote the adherence, spread and proliferation of the Hobs with the significant increase of proliferation number of Hobs adhered on the surface of the coated NiTi alloys (P < 0.05).

[Optimization of the processing technology of Aconitum kusnezoffii Reichb. by orthogonal test].

A study on the processing technology of Aconitum kusnezoffii by orthogonal test was carried out by assaying as criteria the changes in contents of the total alkaloids and ester type alkaloids before and after processing. The optimum experimental conditions were obtained after treating the experimental data with a formula for the multiple criteria, and the optimal processing results were achieved by having the material macerated with water, cut into thick pieces and then steamed under high pressure (127 degrees C, 0.15MPa) for 3 hours.

[Studies on the sweet principles from the leaves of Cyclocarya paliurus (Batal.) Iljinskaya].

Four intensely sweet compounds (I-IV) were obtained from the leaves of Cyclocarya paliurus (Batal.) Iljinskaya. The structure of compound I was elucidated by chemical and spectroscopic methods as 20,24-epoxy-dammarane-(3 beta,12 beta,24R)-12-O-alpha-L-rhamnopyranosyl-25- hydroxyl-3-O-alpha-(5'-O-acetyl)-L-arabinofuranoside. It is a new natural product, named cyclocarioside A, and is the main sweet principle of this plant, possessing about 200 times the sweetness intensity of sugar.

[Studies on the active constituents of Momordica charantia L].

Five compounds were isolated from the seeds of Momordica charantia. This paper reports their structure determination by spectral (IR, UV, HNMR, CNMR, and MS) and chemical methods. The structures of I, II, III, IV and V were elucidated as vacine, mycose, 3-O-(beta-D-glucopyranosyl)-24 beta-ethyl-5 alpha-cholesta-7, trans-22E, 25 (27)-trien-3 beta-ol, momorcharaside A and momorcharaside B respectively. Mycose was the first time found in this plant and compound III was the first time found in the genus Momordica. IV and V were new compounds. IV exhibited obvious inhibition of DNA and RNA syntheses in S 180 tumor cells in preliminary pharmacological studies.